PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Aaron Ropp digs in the ashes of the family home with his father Dave Ropp, finding family heirlooms including two sculptures created by a Polish aunt, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. It was the family’s first visit back to the house since the deadly Camp Fire in Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

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PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Hundreds of Paradise residents return home, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, for the first time since the deadly Camp Fire destroyed much of the town. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Yvette Castanon of the Butte County Environmental Health Department hands out hazardous protection suits to Paradise residents returning home, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. It was the first chance many have had to return home since the deadly Camp Fire destroyed much of the town. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Hundreds of Paradise residents return for the first time since the deadly Camp Fire to their homes, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. Authorities opened up the Pentz Road corridor, though much of the town remains evacuated. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Ginger and Gary Cope return to only ashes and a few ceramic figurines in their Paradise home, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. Much of the town was destroyed by last month’s deadly Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Ginger and Gary Cope return to only ashes and a few ceramic figurines in their Paradise home, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. Much of the town was destroyed by last month’s deadly Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 5: Ginger and Gary Cope return to only ashes and a few ceramic figurines in their Paradise, Calif. home, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018. Much of the town was destroyed by last month’s deadly Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE — The cold and the rain made a somber backdrop to the hundreds of families who were allowed back into Paradise on Wednesday as a portion of the town along Pentz Road reopened.

Hundreds of cars were funneled through the parking lot of the Paradise Evangelical Free Church where Paradise police and Butte County Sheriff’s deputies checked addresses of the returning evacuees and the Butte County Health Department doled out free booties and hazmat suits to assist in digging through the potentially dangerous wreckage.

Only people with addresses in zones 3, 8 and 14 were being allowed back in, said Paradise police Sgt. Robert Pickering. They were checking driver’s licenses when possible, but some only had a bill in their name at the address in question. After the first 24 hours, the area will be open to the general public.

“We just ask that people be patient with the process,” Pickering said. “Even though we’re letting people in, that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of danger still inherent in the area.”

Every car through the checkpoint was also warned of the 8 p.m. curfew.

The evacuation order in the South Pines Zone, near Magalia and the old Paradise Pines Golf Course were also rescinded Wednesday.

Off Pentz Road, Angie and Jeff Dodge, as well as their adult sons Chad and Josh, returned to their home to survey the damage for the first time since they fled on Nov. 8. Angie Dodge shared an emotional moment with her neighbor Tama Czarnecki, who had also returned with her family to see her ruined home.

Dodge grasped Czarnecki tightly and hugged for a long time, and speaking through tears, she shared with her friend and neighbor what it was like to evacuate that morning as the Camp Fire roared through their rural street near Feather River Canyon.

“It took us 8 hours to get out of here” she told Czarnecki, holding her tightly and sobbing. It was the first time the two women had seen each other since before the disaster.

Czarnecki had been on a flight to Israel the morning of Nov. 8, and only her son and his girlfriend were home next door in their neighborhood off Merrill Road.

“It was three hours to go half a mile,” Dodge told her friend through tears. “Things were exploding around us. It was black as night.”

When the two women finally broke their embrace, rain had started falling again, and her family had begun digging through the ash and piles of their former two-story home.

Of particular importance to them, Chad Dodge said, were his father’s fire helmet and badges from 27 years with the Paradise Fire Department, and his own medals and memorabilia from time in the military.

“It’s the little things that would make me happy,” said Angie Dodge, who used to work for the Paradise Police Department. She hoped to find a piece of ceramic artwork by her father that had been inside a fish tank. The Dodges did eventually find a veteran’s medal beneath the rubble, but it had melted into the concrete pad of their former home.

Next door to the Dodges, Czarnecki was having a little better luck. Her son Aaron Ropp and his girlfriend Bethany Abt were picking through the debris of the home they had evacuated a little less than a month ago. Their first warning of the fire had been flames engulfing a house at the end of their street. Ropp had run down the street — toward the fire — knocking on doors and warning neighbors. Today, he jogged down the same street to see if a neighbor needed help looking through the wreckage.

Czarnecki was looking for a box of her mother’s jewelry and a vase that contained several thousand dollars worth of gold coins. She found both, and gently wiped wet ashes off their exteriors with a mittened hand.

“I expected nothing, so anything is just a gift. It’s sentimental,” she said, watching her ex-husband sift through the remains along with Ropp and Abt. Ropp was looking for his football state championship ring, using a sifter box to shake loose rubble.

What they did find was almost abstract, and put together a strange and incomplete story of their four years in the home: a piece of pottery here, a burnt and broken saucer there. The burnt husk of a piano sat at an odd angle just inside the living room.

“How do you even begin to recognize this stuff?” she whispered to Abt, who had brought her over a small vase with burnt knickknacks inside.

“You don’t,” Abt replied.

Strangely, untouched in the middle of the home’s ruins were two small busts Czarnecki’s aunt had made years before. And, as though it was any another December day, Ropp suddenly found a ceramic Christmas manger scene, broken in two, but otherwise unhurt.

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